How we became obsessed with cults

Certainly some religious sects did serious harm. Some engaged in horrific acts—mass violence (the Jonestown massacre) in the case of the People’s Temple, well-documented sexual abuse for the Children of God. The Moon organization, too, was involved in some misdeeds such as tax-evasion (for which Moon went to prison).

Many lives were destroyed or thrown off track by the influence of such cults. But the problem was nowhere near the scale suggested by the media, religious leaders or even the U.S. government.

Cults had no great power to brainwash, as indicated by their embarrassingly poor retention rates. Most recruits stuck around for a year or two before drifting away, either gravitating to a new group or returning to normal life. This revolving-door effect makes solid statistics hard to come by, but the work of scholars such as J. Gordon Melton suggests that all sects combined were influencing a few hundred thousand people at any given time. “Moonie” membership in the U.S. crested at about 7,000 (as documented by Mr. Melton), before declining steeply in the 1980s.